My Bleddy Fears

Water travel makes me nervous. One, I cannot swim. Two, when I travel international, I not only carry my camera gear, but my passport too. That summer, two years ago (when I did this trip), three passports had changed hands (the stolen, the intermediate, and the new). After debating about whether or not to take the boat ride in Lake Bled, I decided to give it a shot. I sat tight, clutching on to my bag and chanting some permutation/combination of God's name in a loop. However, people around me aren't perturbed a bit. They are in this urgent need to take selfies, and every time someone shifts, the boat slightly shifts too, giving me many butterflies in my stomach. The children are leaning out and difficult to control, as usual, the parents have kind of given up, and the guy rowing the boat tells us that the lake is only 31 m deep. Only? Even 31 feet is going to make me nervous. People are changing angles to take pictures of the lake, tempting me to ask them if they have never seen a lake before. But the father of a family of seven (parents and 5 children) take the cake. Ten minutes into our ride, he decides to play music on his handheld device. Céline Dion starts singing her Titanic song. Shit, this is a bad omen, I tell myself. God, please don't let me die like this, due to a capsized boat in Slovenia, of all places...

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Week 8: Traveling when not traveling

Lake Bled in Slovenia

Read other posts with the label: 52 small changes

I did not start traveling either seriously or solo until I was in my late twenties. But once I did, it opened up a whole new world of learning for me. It boosted my confidence immensely and taught me how to pursue things independently, without waiting on people whose travel frequency does not match mine. In a span of six years, I had ended up traveling more than thirty countries, and many of them, alone.

However, I had to recently factor in the reality of my new position- being pre-tenure at a research university, which is not for the faint-hearted. It requires years of immersion in research, being very active and productive in terms of publishing and bringing in grant money. Therefore, I do not get to travel as much these days.

Scratch that. I do get to travel, but it is a different kind of travel. I travel mostly for work and conferences, and these are mostly to urban cities within the US. Baltimore. Atlanta. Boston. San Francisco. Such travel would have thrilled me many years ago, and I once used to spend my own money to visit these places during national holidays, but no more. After a point, all US cities look and feel the same. Sometimes, I do not even get to step out of the conference venue and explore the city.

When I think of my happy travel experiences, I think of hiking and driving around the Grand Canyon. I think of those beautiful sunsets and good food in Puerto Rico. I think of the blueness of the ocean in Hawaii. I think of the geysers of Yellowstone and the glaciers of Montana. I think of eating fried crickets in Mexico and Cambodia. I think of flying over Mount Everest in Nepal. I remember the flavorful stew in Dubrovnik (Croatia) and the church I hiked in Montenegro. I think of the cruise ship I took to Norway and the largest ice caves in the world I hiked in Werfen (Austria). I think of Mount Etna in Sicily (Italy) and the goosebumps I got visiting a concentration camp in Auschwitz (Poland). From the forts of Malta to the oceans of Portugal, from the mountains in Sikkim to the cobbled streets of Estonia, wonderful travel experiences have filled my life. Naturally, after visiting most US cities, the lure of Washington DC, Miami or San Diego is not much.

So how does one travel without traveling?

Once a week (during the weekend), I routinely spend a few hours watching travel documentaries on YouTube. I was amazed at the wealth of resources travel blogs and YouTube provide. It gives me a vicarious sense of travel pleasure. I randomly pick a country on the map and go find everything I can about the country. This is how I learnt about the Pamir Highway connecting Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan, the amazing bhortas and the biryanis one can eat while visiting Bangladesh, the mountains of the Himalayan range, some of the higher motorable roads in the world in Leh and Ladakh, the different seasons in a country as small as Sri Lanka, the fanciest trains in the world and what they offer, the history of Burkina Faso that was formerly called the Republic of Upper Volta, the monasteries of Bhutan, the island of Bali, and so much more. Although I would much rather visit these places in-person, this experience gives me a travel high and enriches my knowledge about the history and the geography of a place when I am cooped up working for months and do not even get to visit the downtown nearby. I find it to be a much better use of time than following the hyped shows and sitcoms.

If you want to see the beautiful, awe-inspiring, rugged mountains of Pakistan, watch the movie Dukhtar. And if you have fascinating travel experiences and itineraries to share, I would love to hear from you.

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Saying no cheese

I never travel without my camera. A big bag with the camera gear, the camera, three different kinds of lenses, two batteries, a charger, a dozen SD cards, etc., my camera bag was always overflowing. When I drove, it sat in the passenger's seat. When I flew, it became the carry-on bag. When I walked, it made my shoulders bend on one side. And I took pictures too. Big time. Of the nature. Of people and monuments. Portraits of friends eating at restaurants. Close-up of the food I ordered. I took an average of a hundred pictures a day during every trip.

And then, I decided to take a break. I decided to sometimes take my camera, but sometimes leave it behind too. Earlier this year when I visited Washington, I walked by the river and enjoyed this beautiful city without a camera. Next, I went to Florida. The city with breathtaking ocean views, ships, sunrise by the Atlantic, and picturesque beaches. Without a camera. During another trip, I walked around Washington DC, visited the monuments, and ate dinner with a lot of friends. Then in Baltimore, we walked by the Inner Harbor in the evening. The weather was fantastic, the crowd energized on a Friday night. Since I did not have a camera, I did not feel the need to take pictures.

It has been strangely liberating. Once in a while, I saw something beautiful and instinctively reached out for my camera, which was not there. It made me want to pause and spend a few extra minutes taking things in, etching it all in my memory since there will never be documentation of it. Meeting old and new friends and eating at some great restaurants, walking in the city, but not leaving behind a trail of documentation has been a freeing experience. If I could just cut down my camera expeditions by 50%, and this will free up gigabytes of online storage for me.

Perhaps attachment minus bondage is what gives an ultimate freeing experience.

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Crabby Tales

I sat by the sea for so long that Sunday morning, watching this crab making its way at its own pace. The waves would wash it off once in a while and drag it along, and when the waves had receded, the crab would start moving again. I love the little trail of footprints that took so long for this crab to make. Something very random but inspiring.

(Outer Banks, North Carolina)

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Picture Imperfect

Beauty sometimes lies in the little imperfection of things around us. It is more of a philosophical thinking, and whenever I think of beauty and imperfection, I think of Shrek and Fiona. I think of the moon, with the craters. I think of the little blemishes that have marred my otherwise perfect life. I think of a little girl giggling, mindless that a few milk teeth are missing. I think of the wrinkles that make my grandmother so beautiful. I think of a progress report card of a genius with a few red lines indicating failed subjects.

Often, we are made to believe that perfect is beautiful. Normal is nice. Aberrations are bad. We place nominal adjectives to a lot of things- Good, bad, ugly, beautiful, perfect, and imperfect. Who defines these parameters? Do they change with time and context? Is it more relative and less absolute? Is it okay to shun something because we do not understand it, and embrace something because we believe in it? What is wrong with a few imperfections, a few failures, a few heartbreaks in life anyway?

This picture I took yesterday is testimony to the fact that beauty sometimes lies in the little imperfection of things around us. I was struggling to get some shots of flying birds from a ferry that was in motion, undulating and wobbling as it made its way along the ocean near North Carolina. The birds flew in a group, often parallel to the ferry, and at the same speed. This made me wonder if the birds were not really in motion, but were suspended mid-air. They were perhaps seagulls with a red beak, I am not so good at identifying birds. So I zoomed in against the western sky with the setting sun, trying to get some shots of the birds. If you see the picture closely, a part of the left wing got cut out. I instantly fell in love with this picture. Do not miss the golden glow at the tip of the right wing.

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Goodbye Woes

Saying goodbye to old friends was never easy. After having shared an exceptionally great (almost) three years with my camera, I bought an upgraded model this Christmas. For the longest time, I was undecided about whether I should do it or not. You see, I realized the fun of photography after I purchased my first D SLR in 2009. I started going places, and my camera always went with me. Be it road trips, parties, outdoor events, or hikes, my camera always accompanied me. I sometimes used it to get through boring events when I would shy away from conversations in the name of taking pictures. I was so proud of it, and so proud of all the pictures I took using it. But sometimes, knowing more is harmful. As I started to read up more about photography, I realized that my camera can only take me so far. I realized I had (almost) learned everything that I could learn using this camera. It was perhaps the right time to graduate to the next level.

I felt my new camera would make me ecstatic, especially after all the money I spent on it. I am not so sure about it. I like it alright, but I feel guilty as hell. I feel guilty that I decided to part with my old camera. The previous two cameras I had (which were not D SLRs by the way), I gave it away to my father. So I never really felt bad about them, knowing they are still in the family. Now, I no longer require my old D SLR camera. I should sell it, and I tried spreading the word. But something in me felt so sad and guilty when I did that. Perhaps this was attachment, and the result of spending every significant moment of my life for the past three years with my camera. I have lost count of the number of pictures I have taken, of the numerous occasions I have witnessed with my camera. I have often ventured out on my own, for hikes or for long drives, just with my camera. I realized that I could close my eyes and use my camera, I am so used to it by now. Somewhere down the line, a typical human emotion like fondness, usually reserved for animate beings, got transferred into an inanimate object. An inanimate object I learned to call my own, and shared three years of my life with.

I have given myself some time. If by the end of it I still have a sad feeling about it, I will perhaps hold on to my camera. Not a very wise decision perhaps, but a little bit of irrational emotion, especially an emotion like attachment, never hurt anyone.

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Thousand pics worth how many words?

I am in the process of compiling a folder with all my travel pics for my family to get some vicarious pleasure. I started to make sub-folders for the different trips to various places. One sub-folder was marked “Yellowstone National Park, July 4^th 2009”.

I went to my original Yellowstone folder with pics and videos, and realized that there were actually 9 of us on that road trip. It was a 3 day trip and 6 of us had a camera. Unsurprisingly, the folder contained at least 5,000 unsorted pics.

I still remember the chaos it created last year, when everyone wanted to share their pics and have a copy of the other person’s pics. Some of us stayed up the whole night to compile all the pics in one central folder, from which copies were made for all of us. When I got a master copy of the folder, I promised to sort them and keep a few. I must have lost patience midway. I am talking of 5,000 odd pics at least. As you can imagine, I never shared the album with anyone, never uploaded it on Picasa, because I [wrongly] thought that a day will come when I will sit and sort through the pics, get rid of the repetitive ones, and compile an album. No prizes for guessing, that day hasn’t arrived till date.

When I skimmed through the albums again, I realized that it was a lot of repetition. Excited at seeing the old faithful geyser, 6 of us had taken some 50 pics of it from 6 different directions. That made it some 300 pics of a single geyser. There were dozens of places we visited.

It reminded me of earlier days, well, not that early actually, something about 5-10 years ago when digital cameras were not in vogue and I used the good old Kodak KB 10. 36 pics were all that you were allowed, and being on the spendthrift side, I had actually made an entire trip to Chennai, Tadoba, Mangalore and Pondicherry with some 90 pics. 90 was a lot back in 2004. In 2010, it is nothing.

So while the quantity went up, the quality came down. It’s been a year almost and I haven’t found the patience to sort through the pics and delete the ones I do not need. I see myself smiling in front of another range of mountains. I skim through and find at least 6 different pics with the same pose. Pic 1 is that of a waterfall. Pic 2 is of the waterfall and me. By pic 3, there are a few more friends with me in front of the waterfall. By pic 4, we are no longer smiling at the camera but are making faces and making “V” horns behind each other’s heads. By pic 5, we look bored and are no longer standing, but sitting. It’s monotonous to skim through them and sort them. 10 minutes of editing and I am done. I am bored. I have lost patience.

On the other hand, I see online albums of some friends and go wow. The albums look so crisp and well edited, not the same mountain range taken from different angles and having different permutations and combinations of people in front of it. Compiling an album [esp an online album] is like editing a movie. You need to flip through the representative pics and see variety. You need to skim through and get an overall idea of the trip.

So while I write this, I have established a thumb rule for my future trips. If I cannot show one day’s worth of places in 100 photos, I am probably not going to do a good job of editing anyway. I skim through the Yellowstone pics again and feel this inexplicable pain, lethargy, and inertia as I start to delete pics. I do not feel like deleting them. I flip from one to the next, trying hard to decide which is the best one to keep.

So tomorrow I am going to downsize my Yellowstone album. My personal target is a total of 500 pics. That’s a lot still, but do you realize it is decimating 90% of the pictures? Yet I am going to do it. And in future, I hope I just don’t stand in front of a flower, a train, a mountain and take pics incessantly. I hope I stop to actually appreciate the beauty of things around me, smell a flower, take in some fresh air, throw a few pebbles in the stream, do anything but randomly grab my camera and go click click click. And remember my thumb rule. If you can’t show your day’s worth in 100 pics maximum, you cannot show it anyway. A picture is worth a thousand words. You don’t really want a thousand pics to tell your story.

So click on that travel folder you have ignored all this while, go through the pics, and go delete delete delete. Trust me, you don’t need most of the pics. Only a few representative ones will do.

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An Over Documented Life

I flipped through the seven folders of my weeklong trip to the different places I’d been to during a particular week of travel and holidaying. Beaches, dams, mountains, fountains, parks, falls, trees, leaves, water, sunshine, and nature.

Every day was documented in a separate folder. Day 1. Day 2. Day 3. You get it, don’t you? I’d decided to take advantage of a digital SLR camera I owned, and capture every bit of what I saw. From every angle. Left. Right. Front. The fountain gurgling water in different directions. Four different shots of the same cloud crowning the mountain. The same beach from three different angles.

I randomly selected a particular folder and clicked on it. 327 pictures. 327 pictures to be sorted, selected, grouped, and labeled. A bunch of representative pictures would be facebooked. A bunch would be emailed home. A bunch would be uploaded on Picasa to be emailed to friends. I flipped through random pictures, hoping to remember the name of the mountain. I clicked on consecutive pictures and all of them looked the same. I remembered the “hocus focus” game we played as children where one would have to spot at least 6 differences in the 2 photographs published in the newspapers. One picture had a minor difference not there in the second one. I tried to focus on the 2 consecutive pictures of the mountains. I could not spot a difference. Maybe one was zoomed in a little more. 327 pictures in a day? And 7 days worth of pictures? I involuntarily yawned. Perhaps the picture sorting task could be done tomorrow. Perhaps in the weekend. We will see.

I remembered an era from a different lifetime, not more than 5 years ago. A Kodak KB 10 camera. 32 pictures in a roll. Click. Wait. Take it to the shop. Wait for a few days. Get the prints. Sort them manually. Put them in an album. Store them in the cupboard.

32 pictures. An entire trip. Was it not an era where trips and festivals and occasions were well documented? Of course there was not a second chance if you happened to shut your eyes when the camera flash shone. You could not have pictures of the same object from different angles. But those 32 pictures were valued, prized, cherished. Not dumped into a folder to be sorted later. I remember my parents’ wedding album. My childhood album. No two pictures look the same, yet every picture has been so well documented.

Hawaii trip. 700 pictures. To be sorted later.

San Francisco trip. 200 pictures. Later.

Birthday pictures. 15 of the 90 pictures have the same facial expression with cake smeared on. To be sorted later.

Bits and bytes and kilobytes and gigabytes of pictures. Later.

The irony is, if you don’t sort it now, you never feel like sorting it later. If you don’t upload it now, you never feel like uploading it later.

Message to self: stop clicking in paranoia as if the mountain is going to collapse the next moment. Enjoy the view first. Don’t take more than one picture of the same thing. And remember, the quality is not in numbers.

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Sound Justification?

Sometimes, we get so caught up with the rigmaroles of mundane life that we fail to notice the simple things right under our nose. When was the last time you got the highest in marks in class? Was it last semester? When was the last time you wrote the best essay and won accolades for you ideas? Last month? When was the last time you went to a night club and danced away? Last weekend? When was the last time you were reminded of your megalomaniac future plans and how much you want to earn in life? Last night?

And when was the last time you actually stopped on your way to class to admire the beauty of the lake and the ducks paddling in the water? When was the last time you stopped in your tracks to see what the slight noise of something behind the trees was all about? When was the last time you stopped to admire the blue sky, the different colors of birds, or simply the variations in the shapes and sizes of the clouds in the sky? When was the last time that you actually got rid of the rain jacket and drenched yourself in the rain, uncaring if you will catch a cold or if you will be able to make it to the class on time? When was the time you chased a butterfly, a duck, or a squirrel?

I know it is not right to go to a class late. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and I was on my way to the class, heavy books in hand, concepts in my brain, and ambitious dreams in my eyes. And then, I sensed some movement near the tree trunk. I knew I should be ignoring it and make a move instead. And what did I do?

There are times like this when you don’t really feel guilty walking into a class late or cooking up some weird excuse to your friends for the delay. For more than what I have learnt sitting in the comfortable confines of closed walls, I have had my share of learning here.

-

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Nature Did It.

They said it rains a lot here. So what? As if it doesn’t rain in India. That’s what I thought.

You had to be here to know what the rains here are like. And they say this year has broken the record of the past many years. Unlike India, it doesn’t pour. It keeps drizzling all day. This has been the case for the last few weeks.

I guess people don’t really notice the rains here. Back in India if this were the case, everyday would be declared a rainy day and people would never go out for work. Here, I am expected to attend classes from 8 am three days a week. Well, I don’t remember seeing daylight anywhere before 7 am here. What more, I don't even need to look out to know if it's raining. The constant sounds of the angry slaps on my windowpane says it all.

The weather is such that you wish everyday was a holiday. You wish you could delve deeper into your sleeping bag and the alarm clock wouldn’t ring at all. You wish there was mom making hot and comforting food. But in the morning, all I survive on are milk and cereals.

I know that I signed up for this life. But then, I saw a very beautiful sight today. Remember Indian weddings where the groom's car is decorated allover with flowers? I have no clue what happens in American weddings. But on my way to school, I actually stopped in the rains to take out my camera and click this.

Who decorated it? Nature did it. Don’t you think it looks amazing?

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